The present invention relates to techniques for, after hardware has been assembled into a magnetic disk drive, assigning functions to the magnetic disk drive to make it operative as a finished product. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique for performing a part or parts of the process of assigning functions to a magnetic disk drive, without using a special test apparatus.
After having their hardware assembled inside, magnetic disk drives undergo function assignment operations such as writing servo data onto magnetic disks and setting parameters relating to magnetic heads and data channels or registering magnetic disk defective sectors. The magnetic disk drives are thus made operative as finished products, which are then shipped to users. The process of assigning functions in this manner to finish the manufacture of the magnetic disk drives whose hardware assembly has been completed is referred to as the function assignment process.
In general, the function assignment process for magnetic disk drives is performed with a large number of magnetic disk drives set up in the cells of the test chamber connected to a special test apparatus. The function assignment process includes the operations of sending commands to each magnetic disk drive from the test apparatus, confirming its response, and sending from the test apparatus the test programs to be performed by each magnetic disk drive. Until the function assignment process has been completely performed by the test apparatus, each magnetic disk drive remains installed in the test chamber.
Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-178744) discloses a technique in which, after a growth program has been sent from an optimized/inspected parent magnetic disk drive to a child magnetic disk drive whose optimizing/inspecting processes are not completed, the child magnetic disk drive performs the optimizing/inspecting processes itself by executing the growth program. It is described that according to this technique, since a grown-up magnetic disk drive can be used as a test apparatus, it is possible to suppress investments in the test apparatus, intended for mass production.